Trying to beat the big bad highway lobby at their own game is a loser’s battle. Congress has been fed the big lie about the “infrastructure crisis” for too long. They see images of that bridge in Minnesota falling down and think that means the nation’s entire highway system is ready to crumble and grind to a halt if they don’t dish out the big bucks. 

Of course, our MDOT doesn’t believe in the old crumbling infrastructure hoax for a minute. They’re too busy spending their billions on the InterCounty Connector and I-95 widening in preparation for the next wave of sprawl.

Highway spending has become synonymous with economic progress, which of course, means sprawl.Contrast this to the bike lobby, which is seen as a bunch of granola-heads who wouldn’t feed the economy except for their next pair of spandex shorts. Never mind that bikeway construction is much more labor intensive and can be built much more quickly than highways. 

Messiah Obama and his merry elves in Congress are too busy handing out the goodies to know what they should do. It’s ridiculous for the feds to tell state and local governments what projects to build anyway. How would they know what should be built on the local level?

The real answer for economic stimulus has been handed to them on a silver platter by the international oil sheiks, who have revealed their vulnerability in the recent demand-driven oil price collapse, but our politicians are too full of themselves to see it. We need a huge new gas tax, the revenue of which should be given back directly to the people who pay it, to spend as they see fit. And if they complain, remind them that they were already paying this tax just a few months ago, albeit directly to Hugo Chavez et al instead of to ourselves.

Then the demand for bikeways, transit, alternative energy and other efficient productive endeavors would erupt from the grassroots, and we would have a true economic recovery.

But this would take leadership, which is definitely lacking in Washington, DC. Instead we will keeping on paying – once for the massive inflationary deficits we will be incurring to pay for the highways and other stimulant drugs. Then again to the oil sheiks who will again realize they can name their own price for oil. Then again for the sprawl and environmental damage we are incurring. So much for the Obama revolution.

So bike and transit lobbyists, do not attempt to elbow your way past the highway lobbyists under the teats of federal funding. Show that you’re better than them.

related reading:

* A study by Maryland PIRG of 16 states’  infrastructure wish-lists found  on average they would spend only 16 percent of funds on public transit or intercity rail projects. Of states reviewed, 7 would allocate 1 percent or less to transit or intercity rail and 4 would allocate nothing at all.

* A Washington Post story describing what transportation officials in Maryland and Virginia would do with the dough.